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A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its Solar power. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet's resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star's energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy.
The first modern imagining of such a structure was by Olaf Stapledon in his science fiction novel Star Maker (1937). The concept was later explored by the physicist Freeman Dyson in his 1960 paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation". Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the escalating energy needs of a technological civilization and would be a necessity for its long-term survival. A signature of such spheres detected in astronomical searches would be an indicator of extraterrestrial intelligence.
Since Dyson's paper, many variant designs involving an artificial structure or series of structures to encompass a star have been proposed in exploratory engineering or described in science fiction, often under the name "Dyson sphere". Fictional depictions often describe a solid shell of matter enclosing a staran arrangement considered by Dyson himself to be impossible.
Dyson did not detail how such a system could be constructed, simply referring to it in the paper as a "shell" or "biosphere". He later clarified that he did not have in mind a solid structure, saying: "A solid shell or ring surrounding a star is mechanically impossible. The form of 'biosphere' which I envisaged consists of a loose collection or swarm of objects traveling on independent orbits around the star." Such a concept has often been referred to as a Dyson swarm; however, in 2013, Dyson said he had come to regret that the concept had been named after him.
SETI has looked for such infrared-heavy spectra from , as has Fermilab. Fermilab discovered 17 potential "ambiguous" candidates, of which four were in 2006 called "amusing but still questionable". Later searches also resulted in several candidates, all of which remain unconfirmed.
On 14 October 2015, Planet Hunters' citizen scientists discovered unusual light fluctuations of the star KIC 8462852 raising press speculation that a Dyson sphere may have been discovered. However, subsequent analysis showed that the results were consistent with the presence of dust. A further campaign in 2024 identified seven possible candidates for Dyson-spheres, but further investigation was said to be required.
are hypothetical megastructures whose purpose is to extract useful energy from a star, sometimes for specific purposes. For example, have been proposed to extract energy for computation, while Shkadov thrusters would extract energy for propulsion. Some proposed stellar engine designs are based on the Dyson sphere.
From May until June 2024, speculation grew that potential signs of interstellar Dyson spheres had been discovered. The seven objects of interestall located within a thousand light-years of Earthare Red dwarf, a class of stars that are smaller and less luminous than the Sun. However, the authors of the findings were careful not to make any overblown claims. Despite this, many media outlets picked up on the story. Less fantastical alternative explanations have been made, including a proposal that the infrared from the discoveries was caused by distant dust-obscured galaxies.
Dyson spheres appear as a background element in many works of fiction, including the 1964 novel The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber where aliens enclose multiple stars in this way. (1997). 9781858683850, Carlton. ISBN 9781858683850 Dyson spheres are depicted in the 1975–1983 book series Saga of Cuckoo by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson, and one functions as the setting of Bob Shaw's 1975 novel Orbitsville and its sequels. In the 1992 episode "" of the TV show , the finds itself trapped in an abandoned Dyson Sphere; in a 2011 interview, Dyson said that he enjoyed the episode, although he considered the sphere depicted to be "nonsense".
Michael Jan Friedman who wrote the novelization observed that in the TV episode itself the Dyson sphere was effectively a MacGuffin, with "just nothing about it" in the story, and decided to flesh out the plot element in his novelization. (2025). 9781416525486, Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9781416525486
Other science-fiction story examples include Tony Rothman's The World Is Round, Somtow Sucharitkul's Inquestor series, Timothy Zahn's Spinneret, James White's Federation World, Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships, and Peter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star. Variations on the Dyson Sphere concept include a single circular band in Larry Niven's 1970 novel Ringworld, a half sphere in the 2012 novel Bowl of Heaven by Gregory Benford and Niven, and nested spheresalso known as a Colin Kapp's 1980s Cageworld series and Brian Stableford's 1979–1990 Asgard trilogy.
Stableford himself observed that Dyson spheres are usually MacGuffins or largely deep in the backgrounds of stories, giving as examples Fritz Leiber's The Wanderer and Linda Nagata's Deception Well, whereas stories involving space exploration tend to employ the variants like Niven's Ringworld.He gives two reasons for this: firstly that Dyson spheres are simply too big to address, which Friedman also alluded to when pointing out that the reason his novelization of "Relics" did not go further into the sphere was that it was only four hundred pages and he had just shy of four weeks to write it; and secondly that, especially for hard science-fiction, Dyson spheres have certain engineering problems that complicate stories. In particular, since gravitational attraction is in equilibrium inside such a sphere (per the shell theorem), other means such as rotating the sphere have to be employed in order to keep things attached to the interior surface, which then leads to the problem of a gravity gradient that goes to zero at the rotational poles. Authors address this with various modifications of the idea such as the aforementioned Cageworld nesting, Dan Alderson's double sphere idea, and Niven's reduced Ringworld (discussed in "Bigger Than Worlds").
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